Smacked hard by power outages caused by Superstorm Sandy, Hudson County business owners got some reassuring news from PSE&G officials this week.

Representatives from the power company met Thursday with business owners to tout its proposed “Energy Strong” program in a Hudson County Chamber of Commerce-sponsored event at the University of Phoenix in Jersey City.

The Energy Strong program would bring $1 billion in infrastructure upgrades to Hudson County over the next 10 years. The plan, introduced in February, is currently awaiting approval from the state Board of Public Utilities.

Large areas of Bayonne, Jersey City and Hoboken were still without power more than a week after Sandy struck New Jersey on Oct. 29 and caused widespread flooding.

“We’re proposing Energy Strong because we feel that it is essential for New Jersey to be equipped to deal with events like the catastrophic storms we’ve experienced in recent years,” said Greg Dunlap, PSE&G’s director of customer support. “It’s important to our customers, such as these businesses, that we’re both resilient and reliable.”

The plan calls for investing more than $3.9 billion into infrastructure across the state. From these funds, $1.7 billion would go toward raising, relocating or protecting 31 electric switching and substations affected by recent storms as well as those in newly designated flood zones. Another $454 million would go toward implementing smart grid technologies to increase the utility’s ability to detect problems and make fixes.

The utility said these investments would ensure that customers are not hit with the same kind of outages that 1.98 million customers throughout the state endured following Superstorm Sandy.

“There was a lot of prep work done after Irene, but Sandy was far beyond everyone’s expectations,” said Dunlap. “Something clearly needs to be done.”

Dunlap also said the proposed investments would not increase the monthly bills of any customers and would save the utility and its customers money in the long term.

Most business owners agreed that infrastructure upgrades are absolutely necessary, but said that they need to be deliberately thought out.

“It’s a good plan and they definitely need to do something,” said Shellie Verbiest, director of operations for Spin Cube, a green-tech company with Jersey City and Clifton locations. “But does this particular plan meet the needs of the community?”

Representatives from local government were also at the meeting, including members of Mayor-elect Steve Fulop’s transition team.

“We want to start building the relationship with groups like PSE&G early and ensure that we can coordinate our efforts, provide the necessary upgrades, and ultimately be more effective,” said Dominick Bauer, a member of Fulop’s transition team.